The Cat's Meow
by SiriousB1
Summary: The town of May has some major problems: dead civilians are popping up everywhere and its only hope is the Humanoid Typhoon. But soon the tables are turned, and Vash becomes an ideal suspect for the murders. There is more to this case than meets the eye..
1. To Gather

The Cat's Meow  
Chapter One: To Gather  
  
The first think that you have to do is make them believe that you're innocent. Meander cautiously over to them and give them the idea that you're a poor, lost soul. Be sweet and kind…suck up to them, if you will.  
  
Continue until they offer you temporary shelter. Let them take you under their wing. But don't be too quick to accept! Oh no; wouldn't want them to think that you're up to something. Make like you don't want to be a burden; like you don't want to be a hassle.  
  
But, when they persist (which, I assure you, they will), give them your dearest thanks and follow them home. They'll feed you, build you a sturdy fire and give you a nice place to rest for the night. Be gracious when they pamper you. You might as well get what you can out of them while their brains still provide their bodies with the necessary signal to move.  
  
It's when the lights go out and the sun sets that the real fun begins.  
  
They'll be resting their eyes after a final goodnight to you. They'll feel happy and proud of themselves that they were able to helps such a small, weak wanderer from the cold desert night. It's almost as if they've secured their spots among the stars when their hourglass finally runs out of sand. It's almost amusing. That is, the fact that the final grains of their time are almost used up and they wasted them on someone else.  
  
Be quiet when you sneak up on them. The most crucial part of the plan requires them not knowing that you are there. Slip ups are not tolerated in this line of work. If you aren't sly, devious, cunning and have feet that can walk on air, then you should change your job and fast. No one likes a sloppy murderer.  
  
So, you get to the point where you can see their chests rising and falling slowly as they slumber. The quiet sound of breathing confirms that a deep sleep has taken over their body. Once this is certain to you, the rest is quite simple.  
  
Draw your hand back and slash across the throat. Make sure you hit a vain; the faster they bleed to death, the better. Continue cutting them until you are positive they live no more and their body is completely mutilated. So much, perhaps, that no one will be able to identify it. The dead man lying in bed could be the owner of the house, or a complete stranger who broke in during the night. Only you can confirm.  
  
And that, my friends, is just one method that I use to commit a perfect murder.

* * *

The man sitting at the table in the corner of the inn's bar looked completely dreadful. His blond hair was mussed and hung down into his pure green eyes that had lost their usual cheerful glow. Huge rings under them made him look ten years older than he really was. His skin was a pale white that made him look sickened. Which, of course, he was.  
  
"Ohhhh!" he moaned as he slammed his head on the table. His hands hung limp at his sides and his long legs were tucked under his chair. His head rolled to one side…only to face a steaming mug that had just been slammed down onto the table. Little drips of black coffee trickled down the sides of the cup.  
  
"What?" he said meekly. "No cream? Aha, aha…" Even in his weakened state he could manage to whip out a wise crack and a soft laugh that sounded much like a dying hyena.  
  
"Don't start making jokes, Vash the Stampede!" snapped the woman who had put the mug down. She pulled out the chair across from the hung-over man so violently that it fell over. Her hair was short and dark blue in color, and a white coat hung loose about her body. She had on a white skirt with a matching top and light colored tights with a hint of purple. Her gold earrings were thing cylinders that almost reached her shoulders. She was small, both vertically and horizontally, but her no-nonsense attitude stretched on for miles. "You're the one who decided to celebrate the birth of that little girl with seven rounds of whiskey. For the whole bar, no less! And then you had us pay for it all!"  
  
"Don't be so hard on him, Meryl. Poor Mr. Vash…" A second girl named Millie, sat down in the remaining seat at the table and began to eat a small ice-cream sundae. To the say the very least, she was almost the exact opposite of the first woman. She was just as tall as Meryl was short and the hair fell far past her broad shoulders was a light shade of brown. She had on pants that were slightly lighter than her hair, with a tan vest over her white shirt. Her traveler's coat was a little greener than turquoise and it went down almost to her knees. Unlike her partner, she was very polite and soft-spoken, but her voice was so high-pitched that it could make anyone want to scream. The only similarity between the two was that she was also very slim.  
  
"Would you two please stop shouting?" said Vash, putting his gloved hands over his ears. "You're making my head hurt even more than it already did!" He groaned again and picked his head up off the table, as well as the coffee. He put the mug to his lips and took a big gulp. Oops…that was a mistake!  
  
Vash's face turned a bright red, almost as red as his coat. "YEEOWWW!!" he hollered as he spit out the coffee. It was almost as if steam would come bursting out of his ears and nostrils. "HOT! HOT! HOT! HOT!" He fanned his tongue violently with his hand and continued to chant the word. He grabbed the bowl that contained Millie's sundae and swallowed what was left of it in one tremendous gulp.  
  
Millie sighed and repeated, "Poor Mr. Vash…"  
  
Meryl, on the other hand, seemed to be thinking something totally different. This was quite easy to understand, however, as coffee dripped from her hair and ran down her pink cheekbones. They were not pink, however, from heat or embarrassment, but from pure, unquestionable anger. "Grrr," she growled as she clenched her fists. And then…"VASH!!"  
  
The blue haired priest that entered the inn via its swinging doors found himself seeing a very bizarre sight. That is, as soon as he passed through the doors, he saw a short girl strangling a tall man in a red coat and another girl, just as tall as the man, circling them trying to figure out the right course of action to get her friend to stop her aggressive antics. Though this was an oddity to the rest of the people in the room, who were staring at the three as if they were complete lunatics, it brought no surprise to the man whatsoever.   
  
As Millie circled her two friends, she spied the man in a midnight blue suit enter the inn. His nose was slightly large, as were his eyes, but neither could match the size of the smile implanted upon his face. A fag burned slowly to one side of his mouth, and he shuffled over to them with one hand waving enthusiastically in the air.  
  
"Well, well, well!" he laughed as he approached them. "What did you do this time, Vash? Sexual harassment? Adultery? Rape? Murder in the first degree? Or, dare I say it…" He paused here and glanced at a very red Meryl, "…possibly try and kiss this fine young insurance girl?"  
  
Vash (who was clutching madly at his throat) was still at a loss for breath, so Meryl allowed her hands to rest on her hips and huffed, "He was drinking again, no thanks to you!"  
  
The priest looked falsely puzzled by now, so Millie added, "Remember last night when Darla and Michael gave birth to that little girl? Well, you were one of the first to know because you blessed her, and then you came here with that bottle of whisky to celebrate. And, well, let's just say that Mr. Vash got carried away. Poor Mr. Vash…" She brightened up suddenly. "So, how has your morning been, Mr. Wolfwood?"  
  
Wolfwood scratched the stubble on his beard thoughtfully. "I told him not to have more than a few shots." He started laughing loudly and with his head thrown back said, "I knew you could never hold your liquor very well! And I thought I told you to call me Nicholas, Millie-baby?"  
  
"Oh, yeah," giggled the smiling brown-haired woman, placing a hand behind her head, "I forgot! Sorry, Mr. Wolfwood!"  
  
The priest sighed and dropped his shoulders. "That's all right…" Then, he stood straight up and his expression turned surprisingly serious. "Hey, did you guys hear about what happened to Sam Cloe?"  
  
"Isn't that the town's blacksmith?" asked Vash. He was now sitting down at the table with his legs crossed. The coffee mug was at his lips and was, thankfully, no longer steaming. It appeared to the other three that he had suddenly gone from a crazy, hung-over traveler to a macho superhero. Which, in a way, he was.  
  
Nicholas D. Wolfwood rolled his yes and said, "Nice of you to join us, Stampede. And I think you mean 'wasn't' he the town's blacksmith. He was found dead in his house this morning." Meryl and Millie exchanged worried glances, while Vash set his coffee down on the table, perhaps a little harder than he had intended. "Dreadful sight, I hear," continued the priest. "Apparently, his entire body had been mutilated! It wasn't like he was cut up into little pieces or anything, but almost like someone had taken a knife and slashed it all across his clothes and skin. They say that his face looked like it was covered by a red spider web!"  
  
"I heard that he had quit some sort of coven, cult thing and the other members killed him for quitting!" interjected one of the men sitting at the bar.  
  
"No way, Bob! I heard that there was some sort of conspiracy against him for making bogus weapons or something," said another.  
  
"Well, I heard…"  
  
Pretty soon, the whole bar was full of talk about the murder of Sam Cloe the Blacksmith. Each idea that the civilians came up with became weirder and weirder as time went on. Some said it was a planned death, others said it was an argument of some sort that had brewed between him and a drinking partner. Still others said that he and a friend had discovered a new kind of ecstasy that drove them both mad and they ended up killing each other.  
  
Wolfwood put out his cigarette and immediately lit another one that he had produced from a pack in his pocket. After inhaling deeply, he sat on the edge of the table and said, "Whatever the cause or reason, one thing's for sure: Same Cloe is as alive as the meat we buy from the butchers and it was no accident. Someone wanted him dead."  
  
Meryl stared into her cup of tea and Millie whispered, "That's terrible." Vash was on the verge of tears and his coffee was cold and forgotten. Rather odd, actually.  
  
You see, Vash the Stampede was the most hunted for criminal on Planet Gunsmoke. He had a price on his head for $$60 billion. It was to everyone's knowledge that he had blown up the city of July with one shot from an unknown sort of weapon, destroying everything. Many said that more innocent lives had been stolen that night than any other explosion or shoot-out had caused. The truth of the matter was that, though there had been a numerous number of injuries, not a single person had died.  
  
Vash does not deny his being accused of such an attack. He does, however, claim that he had been forced into doing so by a person or force that he refuses to name. This, of course, leads some to believe even stronger in his guilt. And yet, still others have seen Vash for who he really is and they are incapable of even letting the thought of his dealing with July cross their minds. That is, unless the thought contains the question, "How can THIS man be that same man?"  
  
And so, Vash sat in his chair at the little table in the inn and bar of the town of May, silent tears staining his face for a man that he had never known. It was common knowledge throughout the town by now that Sam Cloe the Blacksmith was dead. But, sadly, Vash was alone in mourning. Sam, though kind and generous, had a history of drinking problems and, therefore, his "friends" had all been drinking buddies who would only see his death as a sign to find another poor fool with money. Everyone else merely regrets that they have lost the only smith in town.  
  
"How…how could s-someone do th-that?" stammered Vash. His nose was the color of a cherry and his eyes were puffy and swollen. "H-how could someone b-be so cruel!?" A loud 'BANG' echoed through the room as Vash stood up forcefully, making his chair topple to the ground. The customers at the inn became quiet and all eyes turned to him when he said, "I will solve the murder of Sam Cloe if it's the last thing I do!"  
  
Millie squeaked with glee. "That's wonderful, Mr. Vash! Won't everyone be surprised when they find out that Detective Vash the Stampede is on the…oops…"  
  
If you could hear crickets chirping in the silence before, then you could hear a mouse fart now. Everyone's eyes widened at the name "Vash the Stampede" and it was almost as if a single intake of breath went about the whole room. Vash the Stampede in the small town of May? Inconceivable! And yet, hadn't a man guilty of nothing but forging items out of metals and drinking some whiskey just been murdered the night before? The day after the mysterious man with blond hair and a red coat had arrived in town with his three friends?  
  
"Ahahahahahahahahaha!" laughed the tall man. "A real joker, isn't she?" He smiled broadly at them all as he put a hand over Millie's mouth and led her quickly out of the inn. They were followed moments later by Meryl and Wolfwood, who backed out, trying to assure the room that the man wasn't actually Vash the Stampede, the man wanted for leaving an entire town in rubble.  
  
As soon as they left, the talk arose and the rumors of the Humanoid Typhoon staying in the town of May began.

* * *

A/N: OW, MY HANDS HURT!! I really shouldn't type this whole thing in one shot…ow! Anyway, I wrote this last summer and was going to enter it for a magazine, but vacation ended as soon as it had begun and I never managed to finish the final chapter. Regardless, I decided that I'd post it because the magazine that I was going to send it into "went under", for lack of a better phrase. Oh well. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this story. I don't normally write this stuff, but I guess I had a sadistic urge when I began it. Go figure, huh? 


	2. To Pile

The Cat's Meow  
  
Chapter Two: To Pile  
  
"Meow."  
  
Wolfwood and Meryl stood impatiently next to Vash and Millie, who were kneeling on the fine grains of sand that was the ground. They were smiling and laughing as they stroked the stray cat's black fur. Its watery green eyes stared playfully up at them as it tried to bat the wool mitten out of Millie's hand. She swung the glove like a pendulum in front of the cat as he leapt into the air. Too bad; he missed.  
  
Vash chuckled when the cat landed on all fours (as cats always do) and turned around to try again. "Lucky thing that you keep your hat and gloves with you, Millie," he said. "Otherwise, this kitty here would have missed the chance to get some exercise!"  
  
"Yeah, really fortunate," muttered Meryl, folding her arms across her chest. "Come on, you two! We were on our way to a murder scene, or did you forget?"  
  
"Oh, Meryl," sighed Millie as she stood. "You never have time for any fun. Life's going to pass you by."  
  
"That's right, girl!" Wolfwood said, deciding to enter the conversation. He slapped Meryl lightly on the back and continued, "Before you know it, you're gonna' be old and wrinkly!" He jumped backwards to avoid her fist and twirled in a circle laughing. Of course, he could not stop there. "Someday, people are gonna' look at you and whisper, 'That's Old Lady Meryl. She never was any fun, that ol' Meryl. Always cranky, she was. Never go to her house on Halloween…she hands out celery sticks instead of Mars Bars!'"  
  
"Why you…!"  
  
Meryl chased the priest up and down the street several times, turning different shades of red in the process. Wolfwood, however, seemed to be enjoying himself. He encouraged her anger by shouting "Hurry up, Old Lady Meryl!" and "You'll never be able to catch me without your walking stick!" or eve "Faster, old one, faster!"  
  
Vash finally rose to his feet, scratching the head of the purring cat that he held in his arms. He sweat dropped as he saw Meryl taking out two of her single shots and laugh hysterically. "Gee," he said, watching Wolfwood jump around like a River Dancer to avoid the continuous fire of Meryl's guns, "I sure wouldn't want to be in his place!"  
  
"Oh, don't be silly, Mr. Vash!" laughed Millie. "You've been in Mr. Wolfwood's situation before! Remember the time when you…"   
  
"Ahem," Vash interrupted, "I'd rather not remember any of those times, thank you." His expression turned thoughtful as he continued to gaze at his two dancing and shooting friends. "Hey," he said, "didn't she just complain about us messing around and wasting time?"  
  
"You're right!" Millie put her fingers in her mouth and gave a sharp whistle. "Hey, Mr. Wolfwood, Meryl!" She waited for them to come to a halt and then said, "Now who's delaying our arrival at the scene of the crime?"  
  
Meryl looked rather flustered and haughtily said, "If it weren't for Nicholas's rude comments, then I most certainly wouldn't have been forced into taking such actions." She turned to face Wolfwood and snapped, "What kid of priest are you anyway?"  
  
Wolfwood smiled and put a hand behind his head. He couldn't suppress a laugh when he replied, "One of a kind!"  
  
The two men burst into fits of hysterics. Vash almost dropped the cat he was holding as he doubled over. Millie, however, looked worriedly at Meryl and said, "Um, Meryl? Perhaps you should put those firearms away…"  
  
"I…don't…know…what…you're…talking…about!" said Meryl through clenched teeth. Her hand quivered violently as she tightened her grip on the two guns in her hands. It took a minute, but Millie managed to wrestle them away from her.  
  
"Breath, Meryl," Millie soothed. "Breath."   
  
"I think," Wolfwood managed to say between fits, "that it's time I brought you guys to Sam's house."  
  
After several minutes during which a heated debate between Vash and Meryl on whether or not the stray cat could come with them, the five of them (yes, Vash won the argument) made their way to a building on the other side of town. It wasn't at all hard to find. Since word had gotten round that Sam Cloe was dead, the residents of May had begun to gather curiously outside of the old smithy where the deceased man had lived and worked all his life. When our five friends arrived, approximately thirty people could be seen milling around. They were trying to peer through the windows, the door…trying to catch a glimpse of what a murder scene looked like.  
  
The outside of the house and workshop was nothing spectacular. A couple glassless windows, a thick wooden door. The man's living quarters branched out behind and to the side of the smithy, giving a passerby the impression that the owner had quite a sum of money when, in fact, he did not. Little could be seen through the windows as they stood at the back of the crowd, but Millie and Vash (being the tallest) managed to report that there was movement going on inside the place. This, of course, was a murder scene so the idea that came over them was that there was a sheriff and his deputies, perhaps even some town volunteers, in Sam Cloe's home, trying to decide what could be done.  
  
Millie chocked back a sob as she gasped, "Look at all of them. All of the townspeople. They're all pointing and laughing and gossiping. Not a single one of them looks even remotely sorry that someone they have known all their lives has been…has been…" She couldn't bring herself to say the word "murdered", but her friends knew what it was that she was saying all the same. For these people that had grown up with and worked with Sam to show not even the slightest bit of remorse for his death was absolutely preposterous. And now that they stood outside of the place where his fate had been sealed, talking about he latest fashions for women, the baby Susie that had been conceived the night before and what kind of game their children would play later that day, was all more than Millie could bear. She put her face into her hands and sobbed like a child whose birthday had been forgotten.  
  
"There, there, Millie," Meryl whispered, taking a step towards her insurance partner. She stroked her hair gently, proving that even she could show some sort of emotion besides anger. The truth of the matter was that she was also strongly appalled by the crowd's actions on such a dismal morning. And the two girls weren't the only ones.  
  
The clearly outraged priest jumped up onto one of the white-stone walls that separated every building in the city. Though nobody yet saw him, as he was still in the back of the crowd, they would soon. He examined them all from a different, higher perspective, trying to find at least one person who might be mourning the death of the blacksmith. He gave the crown a good twice-over, and still found no one besides his friends with even a single tear in their eyes.  
  
He clenched his fists heatedly and forced his eyes shut. "What is with you people?" he whispered, loud enough so only the ones scattered in the back could hear him. They turned their heads. They seemed to look him up and down for a minute and then, after realizing that he was nobody they knew, returned to their gossip.  
  
This only made Wolfwood more infuriated.  
  
"Don't turn your dry-eyed heads away from me!" His eyes flew open and he put a fist in the air, shaking it fiercely. This time, every one of them could hear him and talk died down to nothing louder than a breath.   
  
"That's right," continued Wolfwood, "all of you! You woke up this morning happy and with not a care in the world; exactly how you wanted to be. But then, when you realized that Same Cloe, your town's blacksmith who always helped you out of a jam, had been murdered, what did you do? You froze in your places out of shock and felt big lumps in your throats as the tears fell down your red cheeks. Who knows, some of you might even have fallen to the ground because you had been struck in the heart so badly by this news that your legs turned to mush. Am I right? Am I!?"  
  
He took a moment to breathe and glance at their reactions. Some of them looked worried; others nervous. Several of them looked downright angry, if not murderous. But whatever their individual expression, they all avoided Wolfwood's gaze.  
  
He shook his head in disgust. "Of course I'm right. I mean, a man that you've grown up with, a man that you've seen everyday is dead. No, he's worse than dead; he's just been brutally killed in cold blood. Who wouldn't cry at the news of a life-long friend's vicious murder?  
  
"But, wait a minute." He stepped down off the wall and walked over to a young woman. "She has no tears in her eyes!" He whirled around and faced a man who towered over him. "And this man has not cried in a long time! His nose isn't even red! In fact," he said, scrambling back up on the wall, "I don't see a single face of remorse. Not any salty drops of water rolling down anyone's cheeks." His hands dropped to his sides and he hung his head. His voice lowered to a sound barely louder than a whisper, so low, that all of them strained to hear his words. "Do you mean to tell me that I was wrong?"  
  
And so it was that Vash gave the cat to Meryl and leapt onto the stone to put a hand on the exasperated priest's shoulder. Wolfwood himself acknowledged this gesture by falling to a crouched position, his bangs covering his face. They could all see tears dancing in his eyes.  
  
"Of course you're wrong, Nicholas," said Vash. All eyes drew to him now. "You're a stranger in this town. You helped a young, happy couple by blessing their precious new born daughter, earning their respect." He looked at the people staring at him and glared at them all. "But you are still a stranger." His voice was now a soft yell, filled with a chocking noise that was holding back a sob. "You have never been in this town before, never known its people, and yet you cry for a dead man that you have never met. But all these people, who have known him so long, dare to laugh outside his house, the house in which he was murdered. Why do you do this, Nicholas? Why do you let tears fall from your eyes when you never even met this man?"  
  
He now faced the people head on, looking at them as they stared at the ground and shoved their hands into their pockets. He started to talk to the people right out. "Because he cares. He gets a sharp pain in his heart when he realizes that an innocent life has been stolen from this place and the corpse's fellow townspeople do not shed a single tear for him. Is it because you hated him? Did he ever hurt you? Were his skills as a blacksmith not good enough to keep you satisfied? Or do you just not care?  
  
"Yes, my friend here is a stranger. But he's a stranger with enough compassion to realize that to cry when someone dies is to help the dead man's soul build a stairway of tears to Heaven."  
  
"But, wait, my friend," started Wolfwood. He stood up and stared at Vash. "You too are a stranger! And are those sobs I hear in your voice? Do you also feel the pain that I feel? Of course you do! Because you are a stranger."  
  
It was more than the townspeople could take. About nine women burst into tears and had to lean against their husbands for support. A few of the men allowed a few drops of salt water to flow from their eyes, but they did so silently. All the same, the majority of the crowd turned red with embarrassment and guilt. They knew that, the two men, the two strangers, standing atop the wall were right. They should have cried. They should have prayed for Sam Cloe's soul to reach the next life safely. But they hadn't.  
  
"Stop cryin'! All of ya's!"  
  
All the eyes, red and not so red, looked at the man who was sitting atop a wall opposite that of Wolfwood's and Vash's. He was a small, greasy haired man and held a bottle of booze that could have quite possibly been glued to his hand. His hair was a dusty brown color, speckled with grey, and the dry eyes that were plastered too far down his head were a deep hazel. No one was near him for the obvious reason that he reeked of liquor and it was apparent that he hadn't washed in days, if not weeks. Wolfwood immediately recognized him as Bob, one of the men from the inn.  
  
He took a swig from the bottle and wiped his lips with the back of a dirty hand. After a nauseating belch, he said, "Have you all suddenly gone soft? It's exactly because they are strangers that they cry for ol' Sam! They didn't know what he was like. Drank all the time, trying to get his hands on women," (hear, Meryl muttered, "Sounds like someone I know…") "pissing in the streets. Nothing like rape or murder, but all the other bad stuff. Never did a good thing in his life, Sam didn't."  
  
"That's not true!" shouted one of the women. "Sam helped me and my husband load our wagon with meats and spices when we were going off to trade with another town!"  
  
"That's right!" yelled a man. "And he made me the best sword I've ever seen! And he made it as a gift for my birthday!"  
  
"What, are you defending him and these two strangers now?" Bob barked. Drops of spittle flew from his mouth and landed on the sand and stuck to his un-kept beard. "Wow, two good deeds and a man is redeemed from a lifetime of sin. Tell me, father," he cocked his head towards Wolfwood, "is that how it works? Loading a wagon and remembering a birthday fix everything and turn an evil man into a good one? Or am I being too just?"  
  
"I'm sure there were other good things that he had done," growled Wolfwood. "There is no man or woman alive who has not sinned. Repent off all sins comes in the final hour of life. For all we know, he could have taken a stranger off the streets and given him a place to rest for the night. One simple, good deed can make all the difference in the Lord's eyes."  
  
"If that's so, and the Lord is really watching, then, whoever brought that blade down upon Sam's skin is forever damned," said a voice. It came from the doorway to Sam's house and an excited hush fell over the crowd. For there, in the front of the smithy stood Tom Mitchel, the sheriff of May.  
  
He walked over the stone wall that Vash and Wolfwood were standing on. He glanced from them to the insurance girls, to the cat in the sand, to Bob, and back to them again. After doing this several times, he said, "I knew Sam Cloe, we all did, but I knew him best. He'd always come over to the office when he was in a fix. He wasn't the best man in the world, but he certainly wasn't the worst. I want to thank you two," he motioned towards the priest and the tall man, "for at least getting some tears out of these folks. God knows they aren't the most emotional lot, but you sure got 'em thinking."  
  
He turned around to address the crowd. "Okay, folks, you all know Sam's dead, so there's no need to stick around! I want all of you to get back to your normal businesses. But, leave no children unsupervised and I suggest going around in pairs. At night, lock you windows and bolt your doors. I don't want to get another message telling me that someone's been killed."  
  
The people muttered and whispered to each other, but started breaking up and stroll casually and slowly down the street.   
  
"As for you four," Sheriff Tom said, "I have two things to say to you. First off all, thank you for finding my cat."  
  
"Oh, this is your cat!" smiled Millie. She bent over and picked up the feline, giving it a last pat on the head before handing it to the sheriff. "We found it wandering around outside the inn. I'm glad it's got a home!"  
  
The sheriff laughed. "Yes, well, I'm glad that there is at least one thing that's good to start off my day. Grisly murder, this is. Never seen anything like it." He accepted his cat from Millie and continued, "Anyhow, the second thing I wanted to tell you is that you should probably get out of this town. This isn't the time for strangers wandering around; you might get accused of Sam Cloe's murder or some' in'."  
  
"That's exactly right, sheriff!" growled Bob. He'd gotten up off the wall and meandered over to them, smiling ghastly. He pointed at the blond man and said, "You see, this here is no ordinary stranger. This here is the one and only Vash the Stampede!"  
  
Those few people that were still hovering around froze and muttered gasps of surprise. "Vash the Stampede!?"   
  
Bob nodded and snickered. "That's right. Feast your eyes on the one and only Humanoid Typhoon. You're a good actor, Stampede. Pretending to be all caring about Sam's death. But I see right through that mask of yours. You know what they say, sheriff, something about the criminal always returning to the scene of the crime?"  
  
Vash looked very surprised. He'd been accused of deaths and murders before, but not after crying over them. How could anyone be so crude?  
  
Meryl, however, jumped right in to defend her friend. She might think him an idiot, but she wasn't about to let some drunk land him in jail! "What do you know?" she shouted. "Vash happened to be at the inn all of last night, I'll have you know!"  
  
"And how can you be sure, little lady?" asked Bob. "Were you with him ALL night? Are you his whore?"  
  
"Why you…I am not his whore!"  
  
"Enough!" cried the sheriff. "I will not have this kind of argument going on in my streets! You," he said, pointing to Bob. "You go and find a washing trough to dunk your head in. And you four…you'd better come with me."  
  
Wolfwood looked taken aback. "Surely you don't think we did this?"  
  
"I don't know what to think. What I do know is that Vash the Stampede happens to be in this town right when a mutilated body turns up, and I can't ignore that. Now, why don't you…"  
  
Sheriff Tom was cut off, however, as he quite suddenly passed out on the ground. No one had hit him, he wasn't bleeding, and the afternoon sun was not blazing very brightly. He'd just collapsed on to the sand!

* * *

A/N: Wow, my laziness regarding homework is obviously taking its toll on me. I should really try harder at summer school…I mean, come one! How could I know how to write a check? I'm only 14! rolls eyes Stupid retard teachers…anyway, here's the second chapter. Posted only because I procrastinate my homework more than I should, this chapter has got to be my favorite. I just love the gospel Nicholas and Vash deliver. I find it softening on their characters. Not to mention the fact that I get the feeling that every one of those villagers is wearing the traveling confessional Wolfwood carries around on their heads. God, I love that thing! Yeah…that's it…I'm done with my incessant rambling…I swear I am…look at me stopping…blah… 


	3. To Kindle

The Cat's Meow  
Chapter 3: To Kindle

Vash the Stampede? In this town? What an extraordinarily lovely surprise! I never intended him to be around, of course, but he makes a nice edition to my plan. Just a few modifications here and there and everything shall be perfect. I can now select my victims with reason to kill instead of randomly selecting them from a crowd!

Oh, they'll all blame him. Perhaps his friends will be stoned to death in the streets. Or maybe they'll all burn at the stake in the town square. What an interesting idea…I love it!

But perhaps I shouldn't celebrate yet. No, something could go wrong. Despite my efforts, I am not the perfect murderer. I have flaws, many of them in fact, that put my capabilities to a minimum. But my determination is one that shouldn't be questioned; with it as strong as it is, I am invincible.

There are other problems to face without thinking about myself, however. That bumbling Sheriff, for example. He's always poking around, as his job permits him to, but he could somehow figure it all out. He's clumsy and can overlook things at times, but he's not as stupid as he looks. Then again, he doesn't worry me the most. With that silly sleeping disorder, I could possibly resort to making him pass out in fright!

No, it is Vash himself that I worry most about. Now there is a smart man who can fire a gun and fire it well. I've heard all about July (who hasn't?) but what the rumors say is practically all bull. No one died there. I know enough about Vash to figure out that he wouldn't hurt a fly unless it was the last possible resort. But no one in May knows that, do they?

So, now the question is this: Who should I kill next in order for Vash to become a walking dead man? Well, it's quite simple, isn't it? After all, everyone's thinking about it. Who yelled at Vash at the smithy? Who made his speech turn the wrong way? Who revealed the true identity of the man in red? And what do the townsfolk think he's going to do about it?

I walk down the middle of the road. The moon is full and shines down, illuminating the town in a strangely eerie way. No one can see me; I'm like the phantom slipping silently through the opera house. A glance here, a pause there, just to make sure that no one is on the street or looking out of their windows.

What makes my lip curl is the racket going on next street over. Every three seconds you hear one of the two of them yell or whistle. They're making this slightly difficult. But, no matter. My victim is too drunk to hear anything.

The stables are, for the most part, quiet. The only sounds flowing from it are the snorts and sighs of the sleeping horses and the splash of water as my victim dunks his head into it. I'm surprised he took Sheriff Tom's advice. And yet…no, not rally. I can see several liquor bottles standing to the side of the water trough.

_Splash!_

He's just pulled his head up out of the water. The haze that clouds his eyes is considerably irritating. I prefer it if my victims can properly see before they die. That way they can remember what their killer looked like as they make their ways to Heaven…or Hell. So they can whisper a soft, "It's you!" as the blood pours from their throats.

He's blinking at me. Perhaps he can see a little blur under the light of the lantern sitting on the ground. He rubs his hands over his eyes and looks again. He obviously figures that there is no one here because he shrugs and prepares to stick his head back into the cold water.

_Splash!_ Stupid drunk.

His head sways a bit under the water. That means he's ready to come up for air. Now's my chance!

I leap up onto his back and move along to the base of his neck. His hands and head are thrashing, but his drunkenness disorients him and he cannot throw me off. He's trying to force his hand up. I can't hold him down there for long… That's the problem with drowning: it takes time. I like immediate results.

I reach my hand under the water and feel around till I find the softest spot in his neck. Yes, that's a good place. Then I drag my nails from one side of it to the other, making sure to hit a vein, as I always do. I like to keep my nails long and sharp, just the right length and shape to substitute for a razor sharp blade.

Blood clouds the water. After a few more seconds, his thrashing slows and, pretty soon, dies altogether. That's just fine.

I jump off of him and pull at his pant leg. He slips out of the trough and onto the sand. A bit of blood-water splashes out and runs down the wood like red tears. He's defiantly dead. Even the flow of blood that was streaming from his neck moments ago has slowed.

I flip him over onto his back. His eyes are closed. Fool. He didn't get to see me before he died. In that case, I'll make sure he'll never see anything in the afterlife either.

* * *

"Is he awake yet, Meryl?"

Meryl Strife and Millie Thompson sat at opposite sides of the Sheriff's office. It was small, but this was because there were four or five jail cells in the back, leaving little room for anything else. There was a desk, cluttered with wanted posters, pens and just about everything else. Behind the desk was a wooden chair, currently occupied by the sheriff.

Sheriff Tom Mitchell didn't look much like a sheriff at all. His face was unshaven, his teeth slightly yellow and his hair greasy. His gut lurched over his leather belt, but his blue shirt was big enough to cover it. Over his shirt he had on a brown, cowhide vest with a random design sewn into the back of it. Pinned to his left chest was the all-to-famous shining gold badge to let the world, or at least the town, know of his office.

Meryl leaned over his limp body and pulled back one of his eyelids, peering into the whiteness of his eyeball.

"No," she sighed. "He's still asleep." She returned to her seat on the other side of the desk and glanced over at Millie. She had pulled a chair over to the window and only looked away from it when she was checking on the sheriff. "Are you okay, Mille?" Meryl asked.

Millie smiled. "It's just, first there was a man murdered, and then the sheriff passed out for no apparent reason, and now this." She waved at the window. "The sun set about an hour ago and Mr. Vash nor Mr. Wolfwood are back yet."

Meryl stood up and went to stand by her friend. She leaned against the wall, folded her arms and looked out. "Yes, well, there's obviously a reason for that. Listen to their shouting! At this rate, they'll wake up the whole town! Why did they bring that cat? I knew they'd lose it."

"Oh Meryl," Millie mumbled. "I'm just really worried about Vash. Everyone's blaming him for that murder! Why is everyone so prejudice these days?"

"Because everyone's a thief, a murderer, or a downright outlaw," said a man's voice. The sheriff stumbled over to the insurance girls and continued, "It's hard to trust anyone these days. You've got to choose your friends well, girls. I'd be careful around those two men."

Meryl nodded. "Yes, well… There's more to them than anybody knows. More than even I know! But, if there is one thing that I do know, I know that Vash the Stampede really isn't a bad person and he knows it. It's just that no one else knows it."

"You're making my head hurt!" laughed the sheriff. "He seemed like a nice person when I met him, but people can be deceiving. And with all these incidents going on, I keep to what I said before: I can't ignore him. If I did, people would think me a lousy sheriff and that I'd messed up everything this town's ever worked for. You mark my words. If it wasn't your friend who did it, I'll find out who did."

Millie's smile strengthened a bit, and then she asked, "If you don't mind me wondering, Mr. Sheriff sir, why did you pass out like that? You really had us worried!"

"Oh, that," said the sheriff distastefully. "I'm afraid to say that I'm a narcoleptic." When Meryl started to say something, he cut her off. "I know that it isn't the best trait to have when you're a sheriff, but I only pass out when my emotions are very strong. Most narcoleptics conk out at any random time, but, in my case, my feelings have to be particularly strong…or jumbled. At that moment, I was angry, surprise and confused all at once. Everything just kind of jumped out at me, so I collapsed. Hey, wait a minute! Is that the moon I see out there? How long have I been asleep?"

Meryl thought for a minute and replied, "It must have been at least four hours. It was late afternoon or early evening when you went out, and the sun set not to long ago. Aren't narcoleptics only supposed to sleep for short periods of time?"

The sheriff scratched his head. "Yeah, normally only for several minutes. I wonder if it was something I ate?" He looked puzzled as he trudged through his office. How could he have been asleep for four hours? He thought it was food poisoning, but he felt fine, and he wasn't heaving out his lunch all over the floor.

He wandered over to the jail cells. All of them were empty, which is exactly how they were when he left, but that wasn't what he wanted to see. In fact, he was so determined to see a certain person locked up in one of the cells that he went to each of them and scaled them with his eyes. He was hoping he might bump into a person which he had missed in the dark. But, alas, no such luck. Besides, all of the cell doors were open. If there had been someone in them, the doors most certainly would have been locked. "Where is your friend?" he shouted back into his office.

"Eh?" Meryl replied, confused. "Which 'friend' are you talking about?"

"You know who I'm talking about!" Sheriff Tom stuck his head back into his office. He looked slightly annoyed, but he took the time to say, "The tall blonde fellow in the red coat with the brown gloves. Vash the Stampede. Where is he? Why has he not been locked up? It's my duty to this town to promote justice wherever I stride. Now tell me where that man went! And if you refuse to talk I'll throw you both into the slammer for a few nights until you do!"

"Calm down, Sheriff Tom sir!" said Millie, moving from her spot by the window. "We don't want you passing out again! We'd be glad to tell you where Mr. Vash went."

Meryl nodded. "That's right. I don't know what I'd do if you keeled over again. Vash and Nicholas, the priest you saw with us earlier, went to take your cat for a walk. It was jumping like a rabid beast by the door, so they let it out. That was about…" she glanced at her watch, "… an hour and a half ago."

"We were waiting for them when you woke up," added Millie. "We're very worried you see."

"You let them walk my _cat_?" roared Sheriff Tom. "Why would you do that? Now not only is a criminal with $$60 billion wandering through the streets of this town, but now he has _my_ cat with him!?" He rolled his eyes and clasped his hands on either side of his head, like he was ready to go insane. "Do you realize how bad this is? If he is Vash the Stampede, then the people could quite possibly stone him to death! If he isn't, people will stone him to death anyway because they think he his! These people don't believe in innocence until proven guilty! Tell them a rumor and they're going to believe it! And now I'm going to be held responsible for a murder that my entire town committed!

"I'll get that man. I'll get that man!" he shouted as he stormed over to the door. "If it's the last thing I…" He stopped, with good reason. When he had flung open the door, who was be standing behind it but Vash the Stampede, holding the sheriff's cat, and Nicholas D. Wolfwood.

"Hello!" said Vash, cheerfully. "We took your cat for a walk because he seemed pretty energetic. Are you feeling better after your…uh…nap? What was that anyway?"

The sheriff stared at him with his jaw dropped and his eyes wide. "You son of a…" he started, but, again, never finished. For what should come but a little girl on the street running towards them screaming over and over again:

"Help! There's been a murder!"


End file.
